Fancy fair - Rollercoaster
Home-built, of course...
I might write something about this for Modelspoormagazine - so for now only pictures...
On my second mini-layout a fancy-fair in a middle-sized city is the main theme. This means a lot of home-building, as my overall project is situated at the end of the 50's. The largest attraction is a rollercoaster, following the example that is used every year on the Antwerp 'Sinksenfoor". This coaster is also why I can participate in this contest: one of the rules: It should hold a meaningful and working piece of railroad. Of coiurse a rollercoaster has a purpose: it's designed to entertain people...
There are model rollercoasters for sale, and I have seen several at the
Dortmund exhibition. But I think I can do better than the things I've seen there.
The drawings show my first "coaches" concept at left, at the right are the rollercoaster tracks. Bottom-right is a picture of the rollercoaster I used as an example. What's apparent on he picture: the fragile-looking construction of the rollercoaster. I will need to use all of my skills (and more) to do this in a 1/87th scale.
The left photo shoiws my first prototype bogie. Excellent design, I thought, but not possible: Far too much friction, a real pain to align its axes, ...no way this was going to work, so: back to the drawing-board. Another suspension design proved to be a lot better.
The newdesign was a lot better, and this made me decide to take part in the contest. Afriend, fellow-modeller, advised me to built a piece of "diving" track, to see if the cars could go up a slope without too much friction. I did the the test, it succeeded, so I really coiuld start building now
Testing (movie 6.8 Mb)
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